Nvidia reveals PX2 supercomputer for driverless cars, Volvo signs on

Technology company Nvidia, best known for its computer graphics hardware, has used this week’s Consumer Electronics Show to reveal a new ‘supercomputer’ artificial intelligence designed specifically for driverless cars. The compact new water-cooled device, dubbed Nvidia Drive PX2, is described as a “deep learning” computer with processing power equivalent to roughly 150 MacBook Pros – and at least one carmaker, Volvo, has signed on to test it. Revealing the system in Las Vegas today, Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang said simply that “self-driving cars are hard” – and his company knows how to get the job done. “Self-driving cars need three things: software, supercomputers, and ‘deep learning’,” he told an audience at CES today. “We are leveraging these to create the brain of future autonomous vehicles that will be continuously alert,…